The James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award Council has announced the winners of the 2009 Tiptree Award, which is is presented annually to a work or works that explore and expand gender roles in science fiction and fantasy. This year’s winners are Cloud & Ashes: Three Winter’s Tales by Greer Gilman (a collection published by Small Beer Press) and Ooku: The Inner Chambers (volume 1 and volume 2) by Fumi Yoshinaga (an alternate-history manga published by VIZ Media).
The Tiptree is a juried award, and the jurors who selected this year’s winners were Karen Joy Fowler (chair), Jude Feldman, Paul Kincaid, Alexis Lothian, and Victor Raymond.
According to the Tiptree Council, Cloud & Ashes contains “three memorable and poetic tales that draw images and elements from folk tales and ballads of the British Isles. Told in lyrical Jacobeanesque dialect, the stories are striking for their language and their originality.” Kincaid said it is “a book whose hold on your mind, on your memory, is assured. It is a story about story, and stories are what we are all made of.” Fowler spoke of the themes in the book: “Patterns repeat, but also mutate in kaleidoscopic fashion and then mutate again. Power shifts about, much of it gender-based; time eats itself like a Möbius strip.” The first two stories in Cloud & Ashes were published previously. The first, “Jack Daw’s Pack,” was a Nebula finalist for 2001. The second, “A Crowd of Bone,” won the 2003 World Fantasy Award. The third story, “Unleaving,” is original to this volume.
The Council said that Ooku: The Inner Chambers “explores an alternate version of feudal Japan, in which a plague has killed three out of every four boys. In this world, young men are protected and sheltered; women have secretly taken positions of authority and power. The Japanese ruler or shogun and the feudal lords are women and much of the story takes place among the men in the shogun’s harem. The title of the work refers to the living quarters for the shogun’s harem, contained within Edo Castle.” Ooku is the first manga to win the Tiptree, and though “no one on the jury is an expert on manga or on Japanese history, the jurors fell in love with the detailed exploration of the world of these books, a world in which men are assumed to be weak and sickly, yet women still use symbolic masculinity to maintain power. Throughout the two books, Yoshinaga explores how the deep gendering of this society is both maintained and challenged by the alteration in ratios.” Feldman says the resulting story “is a fascinating, subtle, and nuanced speculation with gender at its center.” Ooku won the Sense of Gender award from the Japanese Association of Feminist Science Fiction and Fantasy (2005), the Excellence Award at Japan’s Media Arts Festival (2006), and the Grand Prize in Osamu Tezuka Cultural Prize (2009).
The awards will be presented at WisCon 34, which will be held 27-31 May in Madison, Wisconsin. Each award includes $1000 in prize money, “an original artwork created specifically for the award, and the signature chocolate that always accompanies the Tiptree Award.”
The honor list, which the jurors compile to call attention to “works that the jurors found interesting, relevant to the award, and worthy of note,” is as follows:
* “Beautiful White Bodies” by Alice Sola Kim (published in Strange Horizons
* Distances by Vandana Singh (published by Aqueduct Press)
* “Galapagos” by Caitlin R. Kiernan (Eclipse 3)
* Lifelode by Jo Walton (NESFA Press)
* “Useless Things” by Maureen F. McHugh (Eclipse 3)
* “Wives” by Paul Haines (X6)
“In addition, the jury wishes to extend a special honor to L. Timmel Duchamp’s Marq’ssan Cycle, noting the importance of this stunning series, which envisions radical social and political change. Published by Aqueduct Press over a period of four years, this five-book series began with Alanya to Alanya (2005) and concluded with Stretto (2008).”
The James Tiptree, Jr. Award was created in 1991 to honor Alice Sheldon, who wrote under the pseudonym James Tiptree, Jr. By her chance choice of a masculine pen name, Sheldon helped break down the imaginary barrier between “women’s writing” and “men’s writing.” Her insightful short stories were notable for their thoughtful examination of the roles of men and women in our society.